


A Bright Seam

by AdelaCathcart



Series: Request Fics [3]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Angst and Romance, F/M, Marisa is a blonde, Missing Scene, The Human Heart In Conflict With Itself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27642812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelaCathcart/pseuds/AdelaCathcart
Summary: “Asriel, I keep thinking,” Stelmaria murmured. “On the mountain… you weren’t surprised to see her at all.”“To see who?” he replied innocently, but the feint was beneath them both and she ignored it. After a beat, he sighed, and his sore shoulder twitched to approximate a shrug. “No. I wasn’t surprised. I’d wanted her to come.”
Relationships: Lord Asriel & Stelmaria, Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter (referenced)
Series: Request Fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029141
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	A Bright Seam

**Author's Note:**

> "He spends all day searching. In the night he wants to be found." — _The English Patient_ , 1996

For a day and a half Lord Asriel walked through fog. At first it was so impenetrably dense he feared he had entered a world full of nothingness, but as long as his feet met solid ground, he had no choice but to forge onward. In time it thinned, and in its swirls he sometimes thought he glimpsed human figures, but when he called to them the fog muffled the words, his breath disturbed the air, and the creatures flitted out of sight like dreams.

Of course his compass was no use at all, but eventually he began to sense that one point in the blankness was whiter than the rest, and then he knew that that must be the sun. From then on he was able to chart a course south, for he reasoned that he was likely still in the far north, and the particles he sought were drawn to human consciousness, and humans tended to settle where it was warm. Once or twice a glint of something golden caught the weak light, but always fled just as he turned to look. He began to perceive the conical shapes of treetops high above him, and under his boots crunched icy moss and pine-litter. Evergreen shrubs and the naked arms of young trees snagged his coat. A slippery fallen log nearly sent him sprawling. The forms of the plants that emerged were familiar enough, but seen up close they weren’t the plants of home.

“We’re traveling downhill,” Stelmaria remarked.

The snow leopard had been silent for the better part of their journey, allowing her man to save his breath for walking, and he’d been too much absorbed by the thrill of all this novelty to chatter. Now that they were getting their bearings, she wanted him to stop and rest, but hints were all but lost on him, as usual.

“In a valley we might find a suitable place to camp,” she added more pointedly.

“So soon?” he grunted, his voice thick from disuse.

“We need rest. Let’s take it while we can.”

However reluctant, he saw the sense of that. In the shelter of a low rocky cliff he took his camp axe and cut down branches for a lean-to, piled the roof with dry leaves, and tacked an oilcloth over its crooked spine. Inside he spread his bedroll. The moment he lay down he found himself too stiff and exhausted to move: an abrupt wave of fatigue had knocked him flat. His dæmon loosened the double-knotted laces on his boots with careful teeth, and he kicked them off along with his canvas gaiters, and she tucked his legs into his sleeping bag. Even here in the shadows something golden seemed to wink just out of sight.

He sucked a square of Kendall Mint Cake and the sugar cheered him immensely. The leopard lay across his aching feet to warm them, with her fat tail curled for warmth around her nose. She soon sensed him beginning to relax. Now they could talk.

“Asriel, I keep thinking,” she murmured. “On the mountain… you weren’t surprised to see her at all.”

“To see who?” he replied innocently, but the feint was beneath them both and she ignored it. After a beat, he sighed, and his sore shoulder twitched to approximate a shrug. “No. I wasn’t surprised. I’d wanted her to come.”

Stelmaria nodded: normally that would have been enough. Lord Asriel’s will so often seemed to bend the bounds of impossible things, and usually when what he wanted was within his grasp he took it.

“She didn’t come, though,” Stelmaria said.

Asriel huffed. A weary hand groped for a strip of dried seal meat from his bag. “I prefer to be on our own, don’t you?”

“I was happy to see him.”

"That doesn't last," he said quickly.

"We had a common cause. We could have worked together peacefully, as partners."

“I seem to recall you had him in between your teeth.”

“Yes. So what?”

“So you could have taken him and run.”

The tip of Stelmaria’s tail was flicking now. “I couldn't. You know why. What we agreed.” Asriel chewed laboriously on the tough dried meat and said nothing. Finally he swallowed, took a sip from his canteen, and looked directly into his dæmon’s eyes. Even when every other part of him was worn to exhaustion, the man’s gaze held within it a dreadful force. She met it evenly. “But I should have,” she continued, almost angry. 

His words were adamant, even as the voice that spoke them slowed and cracked to gravel. She realized he was falling asleep where he lay. “No, because... Everyone is born with the right to self-determination, Stelmaria, above all else. Each sapient creature must have the freedom to choose a path for themselves, without coercion...” He clenched his jaw crossly and his fearsome glare lost focus. “Even her.”

“She’ll never admit what she wants unless you force her.”

He whispered like the rustling of dry leaves: "Then she'll never have it."

“What’s that there?” Stelmaria interrupted. Something glittering next to his grim face had caught her eye.

A single hair, the color of dark gold, incomparably bright, clung to the fur lining of his hood. Blearily, he drew it out and stretched it taut, too tired to make himself ignore it as he should have done. Instead he saw it blur to a faint seam between his hands, and then, without thinking, he wound it around the last joint of his middle finger, in between the knuckle and the nail. With the last of his strength, he folded the hand to a fist, and hid his head.

A host of fourteen bene elim, which had silently guarded Lord Asriel on his journey, now alighted one by one to form a ring of light around the little shelter. They were powerful and ancient, and they glowed in the night like stars, but his face was buried deep in the crook of his elbow, and his eyes were shut too tight to see them shine.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to a prompt from an anonymous reader on tumblr: "Asriel and Stelmaria discussing Marissa and the monkey after a brief interaction with them."
> 
> Send a tumblr ask with a prompt to @torrefaction-of-silver and I might write you a mini-fic!


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